Pitchfork: Gnarls Barkley Gets ‘Crazy’

Pitchfork: Gnarls Barkley Gets 'Crazy'

Already a sensation in the U.K., the hip-hop/soul paring of Danger Mouse and Cee-Lo known as Gnarls Barkley is getting ready to bring their first album to America. Featuring such potentially wonderful oddities as a nu-soul cover of the Violent Femmes’ “Gone Daddy Gone” and a track entitled “Go Go Gadget,” there probably hasn’t been a hip-hop concept project this anticipated since the Gorillaz first hit the scene. Pitchfork chats with the duo to get a better sense of their mission. An excerpt:

Pitchfork: It seems like you guys are trying to create an air of mystery around the project.

Cee-Lo: Not create one. Maintain one. The mystery just is; it’s still mysterious to us as well.

Danger Mouse: We definitely weren’t trying to hide anything. We started this record more than two years ago and at this point maybe it sounds like this super-big collaboration. But it was never really to be this big thing with this big song. We did most of the record without a label. We were just doing stuff. There wasn’t this thing to really promote because we were seeing how the record was turning out as we were going along. We didn’t know people would care that much. We didn’t make an effort to go, “Hey, aren’t we cool? Isn’t this great?” We just did it.